


reaching out just to feel you

by slurpmind



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: F/F, bet you thought youd seen the last of me, brought to u by aly & ajs lush 80s inspired synthpop, general softness and emotional intimacy, really pointed hand holding, surprise bitch, vulnerable conversation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:40:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21591637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slurpmind/pseuds/slurpmind
Summary: kim and trini have a conversationset post-movie, looking to the future
Relationships: Kimberly Hart/Trini
Comments: 6
Kudos: 88





	reaching out just to feel you

“You know that I’d, like, die for you, right?”

They're literally just eating pizza, reclined on opposite ends of Trini's bed with some music that Trini put on blaring in the background, when Kim says it. It sounds flippant but Trini can sense the other girls nerves in how she purses her lips before she speaks and puts more pauses between her words.

“Um, yes.” Trini says, and stops the bite of pizza before it gets to her mouth. Kim's pizza is set on her plate and she looks very serious for someone with sauce on her face.

Trini puts her slice down and moves to wipe Kim's cheek. “Isn't that the point of our superhero team?”

Trini's never been touchy, especially not with girls, but something about Kim makes her feel at ease, so she wipes the pizza sauce off her face like it's nothing. It's selfish too, she supposes. They have moments like this, moments that Trini tells herself all girls have with their friends and the teammates they’d die for. Opting to hike to the mine after school rather than riding with the boys, waiting up on the cliffs for them because somehow they still got there first and just enjoying the silence together.

“Well yeah but, I know that like three months ago we were in completely different corners of the social arena and I just. Want to make sure you know that I,” she says, pausing to let out a breath, “care about you.”

Trini's thumb lingers on her cheek, bobbing as Kimberly speaks, her palm on Kimberly’s jaw and she pulls away so Kim can't feel the heat in Trini’s hands when she hears  _ care about you.  _

School is almost over, and then comes their summer-before-senior-year. Trini knows she’s not the only one daunted by that. Trini's hand falls in her lap and narrowly avoids smashing her pizza crust. She flinches at the feeling of grease on her hand but Kimberly is unphased, intent on getting this out before the time is too wrong.

“It's not just out of obligation or our like, superhero destiny.”

Kimberly rolls her eyes as she calls them superheroes, like she still doesn't believe her new best friends are heroes or that she's worthy enough to be among them. 

She watches Kimberly's smile fade and fingers tangle together, and Trini’s twitch in her napkin because she wants to hold them, wants to twist Kimberly’s rings around her fingers and feel Kimberly’s thumb run over her palm like she had earlier before training, their legs dangling over the side of the cliff. She shifts towards her instead, still keeping them a friendly distance apart.

“Jason was popular too, K.” Trini says with a shrug, her voice curving up in a question to cover up the sudden creak in her tone. “I'm used to being on the outside.”

“Jason's always been sweet to everyone, even people he didn't know. I wasn't just  oblivious, I was… ignorant. My best friends were the ones who were shitty to other people and I just… didn't care. I was kind of an airhead at first but I became something _ else _ at some point.”

Trini’s jaw clenches without her willing it. She remembers. The slurs on her locker, the reason she skipped out on socializing for her first year at Angel Grove.

Kimberly pinches her eyes shut and shakes her head, continues, “They were  _ my _ friends. I may as well have done the things they did. To people like Billy.”

Kimberly’s eyes flash open and she shifts to move her hair out of her face. 

“To you.”

Trini tries not to flinch, she really does. But Kim looks at her while she speaks and Trini can't take it, so she looks down at where her own hands tangle in the blanket, ringing the strands together.

“I need you to know that I’m not that person anymore, Trin.”

It’s a strange reversal, Kim looking at Trini and refusing to look away while Trini can’t keep her eyes in one place. Fuck, why does she have to say her name like that?

“Or I’m really trying not to be.”

Trini looks up at her, suddenly overwhelmed and taken aback. Kimberly literally helped them  _ save the world _ , why does she need Trini to validate her?

“ _ Trying _ ? What- why are you telling me this?”

“Because I’m not sure, okay?” Her voice breaks, and she takes a moment to work her throat and clear her voice before continuing, “I’ve never been sure and you, you tell me how it is, you always have.” Kim is shaking her head, blinking away tears before they can really show up, but Trini sees them anyway.

“You see me, Trini.”

Trini wants to look down and away but when she tries, Kim speaks again.

“And I need to know that the person you see”, she starts, taking a moment to grab Trini’s hand in one of her own, “Is the same person that I see in myself.”

It’s a heavy silence between them now, the kind that comes after the slam of a door or the drop of a weight. As oppressive as Trini’s family might be, at least she’s sure of who she is. Trini can see now that Kimberly is so uncertain that she needs her friends, needs Trini, backing her up.

Kim’s free hand is at her chest, pressing on her heart like she’s trying to feel it, or crush it. This is crazy, both of them so inexplicably emotional when minutes ago they were eating pizza. 

But Trini thinks she should’ve seen it in the way Kim asked her to hang out today at school, the sly, shy way she had shown up at her window with a pizza and laughed as Trini watched her climb the sill with the box tucked under her arm.

Trini takes a breath and starts, “Kim, I. I’ve told you before I’m not the most  _ expressive _ when it comes to this ‘go team’ stuff,” but the weight of Kimberly’s fingers filling the spaces between her own calms her, entirely outside of her own volition, and makes her breath come easier even as her heart thumps in her chest.

“So you’ve done shitty things, okay! You saved the world, dude.” Kimberly looks down at that but Trini can see that half-smile just before she does.

“And you saved  _ us _ , the way you dropped Billy’s zord onto Goldar? That was badass, Kim.”

Kimberly’s mouth creaks up further at the corner, despite her brow being folded with concern and her eyes being shut.

“You didn’t have to do any of that.”

Trini watches Kimberly shake her head, face twisted up like she’s going to laugh or cry, and she tightens her hold on Kim’s fingers.

“You’re beyond what you’ve fucked up. And you’re a good person beyond just being a Power Ranger. You don’t have to help when I have nightmares.” Doesn’t have to lie by her side when she wakes sweating from from flashbacks of Rita, or bring her coffee in the morning just the way she likes.

Kimberly opens her eyes, tension in her expression gone, ducks her head to the side and laughs. “That’s different.”

“Different?” Trini doesn’t believe her, draws her words out and gives her the best sarcastic “Okay” she’s got, wanting to watch Kimberly’s face relax more and make her smile easy instead of tight.

Kimberly’s head bobs to the other side, slowly, and her eyes stay focused on Trini. 

“That’s… for different reasons.” Her voice is neutral, sounding just slightly out of breath, and her eyes are still wet but they’re light, too, with something almost like levity. 

Trini’s pulse  _ thumps _ in her hand, still being held by Kim, when she says “Really?”

It’s like Kimberly blinks awake and her mouth falls from a smirk into an open mouth. “Yeah but, uh, don’t. Don’t ask me about it. Not yet, I mean. Ask other things, yeah, but, uh.” And Trini can’t help but let out a laugh at how Kim’s cool facade crumbles so quickly.

“Okay, what should I ask you?”

Kim just shrugs, flattens Trini’s hand between both of hers, so Trini continues.

“Okay, do you... miss anything about your old life?”

What makes her think of it, she’ll never know. Maybe it had been on her mind for a while, maybe she thought it’d give her some clue as to why Kimberly has so much weight on her heart, or why she knew Zack’s name and not hers that night at the mines.

Kimberly is quiet for a minute before she answers. She traces Trini’s hands with her own, over the curves of her fingers and in the junction of her joints, and Trini leans into it.

“My friends, I guess.”

Trini’s eyebrows quirk up at that, at how resigned Kimberly sounds.

“Not where they were, like, horrible or exiling me from their group, I was just in this little clique of girls, you know? We had boyfriends, but I was there because of… them. Them rejecting me was way worse than anything Ty could have done.”

“Huh. That’s kinda gay,” Trini lets slip without realizing, on reflex almost, with her eyebrows screwed up in surprise while her eyes fixate somewhere else blankly. She tries to recover it, but Kim cuts her off before she can get through a “Fuck, I mean I-”

“No, no, it’s okay.” Kimberly exhales and puts her hands on her own knees. “I’m kinda gay.”

They both pause. Trini watches her fellow ranger nervously count the tips of her fingers as she taps them. She holds her own breath out of respect since Kim could elect to escape out the window if Trini scares her.

She doesn’t, though. Rather than leaving or brushing it off, she surprises Trini by cracking a smile and saying, “I mean I’m not  _ kind of _ anything, I’m… full bi.”

Then she picks her head up to watch Trini let out a laugh, unreserved for the first time tonight and also breathless, taken aback in a good way.

Trini had felt something with Kimberly, had sensed something about her, since the first time they met. However. Sensing that Kimberly was patently not straight or that Kimberly was otherwise  _ like her  _ turned out to be a vastly different experience than knowing. Hearing it audibly confirmed.

Trini blinks six times before she speaks again.

“Is that the first time you’ve ever said that?”

“I brought it up with Amanda once. She said “We all make out with girls at parties, Kim, don’t overthink it.”” Kimberly rolls her eyes at the memory, and catches Trini’s jaw come ajar just slightly.

“You made out with girls at parties?” Trini realizes in that moment that she’s sounding more like Zack every day.

“Ass.” Kim says, blushing, and gets serious again, “But you get what I’m saying.”

Trini does. She gets that Kim means that she can be herself around the four of them, that she feels more like herself around them than she ever has with anyone. Trini feels that way too.

“Yeah,” she gives the girl on the other side of her bed a smile, and says, “Yeah, I do.”

They look at each other for a long moment, and the sounds from Trini’s speaker seem to get louder.    
_ Right now, right now, I just wanna be with you. _

Trini’s eyes widen just a bit when she realizes what song it is, not meaning for it to have played. Kim is still looking at her, both of them leaning over paper plates at opposite ends of the comforter. It feels like they’re talking, amidst the gated reverb, the claps and the synth, even though they’re just smiling softly and seeing one another.

And when the decrescendo of the song ends and it comes back in a new stuttered beat, they are still holding hands.

**Author's Note:**

> dug this one out from where it was sitting unfinished and polished it up for all the real ones who still love these gay superhero teenagers!! pls tell me what u think or follow me on tumblr @fashsm  
> happy u.s. thanksgiving


End file.
